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By Cordelia

The Aileen Fyfe article, “Business and Reading Across the Atlantic: W. & R. Chambers and the United States Market, 1840-60″ discusses how Chambers, the publishing giants of the UK spread their services into the United States. Specifically, she notes how steam printing was used exclusively for periodicals and high-circulation newspapers but Chambers changed that precedent by applying the technique to books. This allowed for books to be made quickly and cheaply and to therefore be sold as such – even more so considering that the new technology of the steam engine allowed transportation across the Atlantic to be expedited. This led, however, to what really caught my attention in this article which was Fyfe’s statement that Chambers effectively had a business plan to spread as many of their publications as widely as possible throughout the United States. Though this was not the original intent of the passage, this reminded me of the railroads and how, around the same time as the advent of steam-based publishing, a new steam-based transport was being spread across the United States at a high rate of speed and, really, as widely as possible. In this sense, the publishing industry and the railroad industry were quite similar and Fyfe connects the two even more when discussing textbooks. In fact, textbooks and other educational publications appear to have been the most in-demand pieces of literature sold by Chambers and reminded me a lot of the ways in which the railroads connected people, thereby spreading education. I found a further connection in the way that the American companies to which Chambers sold were able to sell copies of books to customers in the amount and time that they wished if it were serial – a democratic capitalistic ideal seen further in the rail industry in regards to times and the selection of such.

As Sherwood states in his earlier post regarding The Last of the Mohicans, the new technology of steam caused a new need for precise measurements of time – something further seen in the publishing industry in regards to selling to companies as well as potentially timing reprinting issues.